25 thoughts on “Carlos Graffe and Daniel Blanco – kudos!”

THIS is the type of investigative reporting that needs to be done in Venezuela! The entire Country is like this: Ruins/abandonment/uncompleted construction, papered over by billboards/Government propaganda, and slathered over by Chavez’s lying blathering.

I remember on several occasions driving by those tents on my way to Valencia. I was always impressed, they really looked first-world-like and the humongous size of the billboards over them only augmented the false perception that some important project was being carried out inside them. Shit, I never imagined it was all a f’cking farce, a tangible cover-up of another failure from the corrupt phonies that presumably govern the country.

The inevitable Government Response: Al Aissami just said that Graffe/Co. illegally entered this Campesino cultivo and shot and wounded one of the campesinos, and GloboVision, which passed the video this morning, should be investigated. Also, as stated by the Minister Of Defense, the Yanomami massacre, after being “duly investigated”, is all a lie, and this in spite of Survivors International calling for the Brazilian Govt. to investigate, since it was reported by the Yanomamis themselves. George Orwell, step aside–the Animals really are running the Farm.

They already posted an answer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YyS13Q3Y7VM
Interesting that they just show one house. The first video posted here showing the house full of wild plants sounds real. It is funny when it gets to the other house that is empy because it appears that they just harvested the area

The scandal doesn’t end with the land, or the deceit practised against the members of the local consejos comunales (at least one leading member of which refused to take part in Jaua’s show to ‘refute’ the Radar de los Barrios programme). Another interesting line of investigation is who sold the government the acres of ‘malla sombra’ … the material used to shade the (non-existent) crops. If the price at which it was offered to local producers in the area is anything to go by, the outlay may have been three times the market price.

What difference does it make that it’s winter when the land is all covered with that fancy material and is supposed to have an irrigation system? Maybe there’s no such irrigation system… And by the way the women talk, it sounds like it’s just tomato they’re growing, not the long list of hortalizas Chavez named.

I’ve worked in greenhouses and believe me, it doesn’t take two bloody years to grow vegetables. Those greenhouses were inaugurated and then left to go back to nature. It’s how all Chavista programs work, there’s a big announcement, a ribbon cutting and then it slowly rots.

I wondered about that, too, as well as the timeline and other quantifiable information.
Graffe & Co could have done a far better job of investigation. Their generalized video clip comes across as sensationalist with too many holes left for airy-fairy defenses from chavismo.